My body didn’t get it. I couldn’t deny that I wanted him on a purely physical level, but if I gave in to that, my heart would wake up and want more. I couldn’t play that game with Boyce. He would break me.

Even if I’d experienced brief moments of wishing I could be more than a friend he found attractive, I had never let myself imagine him falling in love with me. Exception: those few hours between our only time together and seeing him on the beach with a girl on his lap—a temp fuck—that’s what he and his friends called the tourists’ daughters they hooked up with.

Playing house had put relationship mirages in my head where none existed before. Or maybe I’d just been able to repress them before now. Damn Brittney Loper and her cruel promptings to land the boy I’d loved all my life.

Nine weeks, two days.

“I forgot to tell you—Brittney Loper came by for you,” I said when Boyce came inside.

He paused before pulling the fridge door wide and staring inside. “What did she want?” The waistband of his shorts was damp with perspiration.

“She said her truck was shaking.”

He grabbed a bottle of premade iced tea and a small tub of grilled chicken and turned around, his lips quirked. “That can’t be abnormal for her.” His shorts hung lower than they had an hour ago—showing off the sweat-sheened ladder of muscle notching his abdomen and sculpted chest.

“Boyce.”

“What?” He chuckled, spearing slices of chicken with a fork and wolfing them down.

“Double standard much?” I snapped, pointlessly angry.

“All right—down, ethics police—I’m just playing. God knows my TA’s been known to shake now and again.”

I wanted to punch him, but he probably wouldn’t even feel it. He looked like a bodybuilder, skin oiled to highlight the hard-won cuts and rock-solid curves.

“She say when she’s coming back?”

I stared down at my book. “She said she’d come back tomorrow. She’s at work now.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday—that’s my only day off.”

“I guess she believes she has a… special influence with you.”

He grunted. “The fuck she does. No one has influence over my Sundays.” When he finished off the chicken, he tipped the iced tea back and drank all of it without stopping.

Efforts to keep my eyes glued to the open book in front of me were a giant fail. I watched him through my hair, ready to feign total concentration on the text I was supposedly reading at the least indication that he was about to notice me staring like a creeper.

“I’m gonna grab a shower and go out. I’ll probably stop and check Brit’s truck.” He turned to look at me and my eyes dropped to the textbook. “Wanna go with, get a beer?”

“No thanks. I’ve got to get through this chapter.” Bullshit. I was more than caught up. There was just no way I was going to go watch him flirt with Brittney or the vacationers who’d begun to show up en masse in the past two weeks. And when he brings someone home—which could happen tonight? my practical side asked. I was of a mind to tie and gag my practical side. “I have to apply for more jobs tomorrow too.”

“No luck this morning?”

“Zero. But I’ll find something,” I said, professing more confidence than I had. “I just have to keep looking.”

Chapter Seventeen

Boyce

Brittney plopped a shot of Cuervo down on the bar in front of me. “Where’s Pearl?”

I asked if she wanted to come along. She said no—as usual. “We’re roommates, Brit, not married.”

“You wish.”

“What?”

“Oh, c’mon, like you haven’t thought about it. Or at least one part of it.” She grinned. “And y’all would make some cute babies.”

My mouth dropped open like I was bent on catching flies, and an image flashed through my mind like a video clip: I opened a door and a kid ran up and attached itself to my leg—a kid that looked like Pearl the day I met her. I closed my eyes briefly to clear it, but that image stuck like it’d been welded to my brain. “The hell? Why would you think a guy my age would be thinking about shit like that?”

She snorted. “If a girl like Pearl Frank doesn’t make you think of putting a ring on it, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought. Best fish or cut bait, Boyce Wynn, before that girl gets a better offer.”

I scowled, no retort coming to mind—a damned unprecedented state of affairs for me.

“I’m just sayin’! No need for a hissy fit.”

My teeth gritted. “Subject change. When’s the last time you’ve had your tires rotated?”

She arched a brow.

“You said your truck was shaking? Having the tires rotated and balanced would be the easiest, cheapest fix if that’s the problem. Unless you’ve had it done lately.” I sipped the tequila, back on solid ground.

“Well, hmm. I got new tires for graduation.”

I put the shot glass down. “As in four years ago?”

“Boyce, tires ain’t in my wheelhouse. I know beer and liquor. I know how to make my grandma’s pecan pie from scratch and biscuits and gravy that’d make you cry they’re so good. I know good boys and bad boys and how to turn the former into the latter. I do not know tires.”

I held up a hand. “Bring it by tomorrow, late morning—but text me first. Thompson and me are going fishing early.”